Running your own business has many advantages. For example, there is no salary cap, you’re your own boss, and you can follow your passion and get paid for it. Unfortunately, there are some disadvantages, however. There is not the same security as with a corporate job, for example, and if you work for yourself, by yourself, you will have to do everything yourself. A small business owner may have to fulfill multiple roles within the business, such as bookkeeper, receptionist, and marketer.
There are two ways to make life much easier as a small business owner – outsourcing and technology. With outsourcing, you can hire someone on the other side of the world, or next door, to carry out particular services for your business. Technology can also help to streamline your work and make you more productive. Today we will look at the best mobile phone apps for organizing and executing essential business tasks.
Google Drive
Google Drive gives you access to several free tools, including Google Sheets, Google Docs, and Google Slides. It even has a free website builder called Google Sites, and it comes with 15 GB of free storage.
If you have employees or freelancers working for you, you can invite other users to edit documents that you are working on. It’s great for collaborative work, and it makes it very easy to share documents and sheets with clients by emailing them a hyperlink. Sending a link is so much easier than emailing files, especially when the files are huge!
Google Meet
Google Meet is a free video conference tool and app. It is an excellent tool for hosting video meetings or conferences with clients and colleagues. You can invite up to 100 people to the same video meeting, and there is no limit in terms of duration. You can also share screens and use captions to enhance the ease of communication.
Moneypenny Phone Answering Service
Being a business owner can be very stressful, and unwanted phone calls can be incredibly annoying. With the number of spam calls increasing year on year, a phone answering service can help filter out unwanted callers.
In addition, with a phone answering app, you can wow your customers and callers while you focus on the work at hand. With a professional answering service provider such as Moneypenny, you can enjoy all of the benefits that come with a full-time receptionist for a fraction of the cost.
With a phone answering app, you can forward calls from your mobile to a landline. You can add on a virtual receptionist service for an additional cost, which should mean that you will never miss a business call again. Most callers will not leave a voicemail message and will go onto to call a direct competitor. Having a highly professional receptionist answer your calls will make your callers feel valued and important.
Bubble No Code App Builder
Bubble is a fantastic app that allows you to create your own mobile apps without using any code.
Bubble is very powerful and lets you create practically any app you can think of. Without any code, Bubble allows you to drag and drop features and functions, and you can build an entire database, a front-end design, and connect to other applications such as Asana.
So if you need an app for your business but don’t know how to code, then check out Bubble.io
Trello
Trello is a great project management tool, and it is also an excellent tool for organizing yourself and your business.
For example, if you wanted to use Trello to help to organize things, you could create a “board” called “workflow” within which you plan out all of your blogging, social media, and content marketing campaigns.
It’s great for collaboration and project management too. For example, if you have a graphic designer, you can create cards for a “graphic design” board and then assign your graphic designer to each task and give him or her a deadline.
InShot
InShot is a free app that allows you to edit videos and pictures. It will enable you to add headers and footer images that stay on the video throughout its entirety. You can also trim videos, split videos, remove sections of video clips, merge clips and adjust the speed. You can also add filters, stickers, and text.
Voicella
Along with InShot, another great app to consider downloading is Voicella. The Voicella app automatically generates captions for your videos. As most social media users watch videos with the sound muted, adding captions can make all the difference.
Conclusion
There are so many business apps available; it can be overwhelming and confusing when deciding which ones to use. All of the apps listed above are great for marketing, workflow and branding. We’ve missed some of the more obvious apps related to bookkeeping and legal contracts, including Quickbooks and DocsCorp. These are definitely worth checking out too!